School Success Model spearheads deeper offensive against Australian public schools

Erika Zimmer

A new blueprint, dubbed the School Success Model, was imposed on teachers and students last month with the opening of the school year in New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s most populous state. It takes another major step toward implementing the pro-corporate education restructuring ushered in by the federal Labor Party governments a decade ago.

School Success features a further narrowing of the school curriculum, and the imposition of mandatory teaching methods, learning materials, classroom content and practice. It establishes annual improvement targets, with “underperforming” schools facing automatic departmental intervention, and ties teacher performance to how much “value” they add to student “learning progressions.”

MacRobertson Girl’s High School (Wikimedia Commons)

Taken as a whole, the model represents a historic attack on any notion of enlightened education for the vast majority of children. School Success is being implemented by state Liberal-National Party government in NSW to replace the Local Schools Local Decisions (LSLD) autonomy model introduced in NSW in 2012.

LSLD eliminated 800 curriculum support positions in the state education department’s central office and devolved many financial decisions to school principals. Thousands of permanent teaching positions were replaced by casual and temporary appointments as cost-cutting measures.

In addition, in order to extract increased productivity from already overworked teachers, teacher dismissal procedures were fast-tracked, assisted by a call by the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) for a special task force to facilitate the removal of so-called underperforming teachers. LSLD also tied teachers’ pay rises to meeting “standards,” a step toward pay for “student performance.”

The new model will further entrench a two-tier system of school education. In a country with already one of the highest levels in the OECD of private school enrolments, the growing resource gap between public and private schools, compounded by the mandating of regressive new teaching methods, will further drive down public school enrolments and undercut public education.

As with LSLD, School Success aligns with the pro-corporate “Gonski 2.0” agenda, unveiled by the federal Liberal-National government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. This program was to ensure that schools meet the demands of business for a work-ready labour force. School Success includes even more intensive government monitoring of student and teacher performance, via a data-driven testing model, despite teacher opposition to high-stakes testing.

The new model aims to further cut costs as dictated by the corporate elite. It dovetails with a NSW Treasury report that dismissed the glaring inequities and ongoing school funding cuts, and declared that “policymakers need to look beyond funding to lift student performance.” School Success is also in line with the recommendations of a 2020 NSW parliamentary report authored by One Nation parliamentarian Mark Latham, on how schools measure results. Berejiklian hailed its calls for “reform.”

A former federal Labor Party leader, Latham joined the far-right anti-immigrant One Nation party in 2018. He is an unabashed advocate of slashing social spending, cutting taxes for high-income recipients and dismantling welfare and education entitlements. School Success is to be rolled out over 2021 to 2024, together with an overhaul of the school curriculum, billed as the “biggest change to education in over 30 years.” The thrust is to “clean out” the curriculum and turn back to the “basics.” School-based programs, devised to overcome the high levels of disengagement among students are in the firing line, with 20 percent of courses already cut. Announcements of further subject restrictions are expected next month.

The rigid and mechanical phonics model for teaching reading is to be elevated in schools through a mandatory phonics screening test imposed on Year One, six-year-old, pupils.

Annual targets for improvements, based on test results such as the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and Higher School Certificate (HSC) tests, will be imposed on schools with government oversight measures strengthened. Schools will be required to publish individual school targets. Schools with “substandard” outcomes will be placed on performance plans and subject to departmental intervention.

In addition, new data collection platforms, such as PLAN2, have been launched to closely monitor student “progress” in literacy and numeracy via a unique student identification number. Teachers will be required to regularly enter “individual progression indicators” linked to syllabus outcomes. This will subject students to an endless round of tests and further create a platform for “performance pay” for teachers.

Classroom practice is to be subjected to a “laser-like” scrutiny. While full details of the curriculum changes are yet to be published, one recommendation in Latham’s report, supported by NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell, provides an indication.

The government’s data hub, the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE), is to devise a “CESE menu” of “mandatory best practice framework for teaching methods, learning materials, classroom content and practice, physical classroom design, external consultants and school management.”

None of these measures would be possible without the support of the teacher unions. NSWTF executives have dismissed the School Success Model as “spin without substance.” Their criticism is limited to the government’s failure to restore the 800 positions initially lost under LSLD.

Teachers opposed the introduction of LSLD, with 50,000 defying a strike ban in 2012 to protest against it. That strike was betrayed by NSWTF leaders, who postured as opponents, then entered into negotiations with the government to enforce LSLD measures. This continued a long list of union betrayals, including union moves to call off a boycott of the NAPLAN testing regime in 2010 despite mass opposition.

NSWTF leaders have been working closely with the education department on the new school “reform.” During the launch of a 2021 School Excellence in Action meeting in July 2020, NSW education department secretary Mark Scott praised the NSWTF as one of the government’s great partners in “driving school improvement.”

As farmers expand their agitation, Indian government intensifies repression

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Pushed on the back foot by the popular support for the farmers’ agitation against its pro-agribusiness farm laws, India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is systematically intensifying state repression against protesters and their supporters.

Since late November, tens of thousands of protesting farmers, principally from the nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, have been encamped on the outskirts of the Delhi National Capital Territory. Their Delhi Chalo (Let’s go to Delhi) protest, which is demanding the repeal of all three recently-enacted farm laws, was prevented from entering the capital by a massive police mobilisation organised by the Modi government.

Toyota workers and Karnataka farmers stage joint procession in Bengaluru (Credit: WSWS)

During the first 75 days of the protest, over 200 farmers have died due to bitterly cold weather, accidents, and suicides.

The farm laws strengthen the domination of major domestic and international agribusiness concerns over India’s agricultural sector, and all but abolish the minimum support price (MSP) guarantee for farmers’ crops.

They are part of a battery of pro-investor reforms being implemented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu supremacist BJP in order to boost the competitiveness of Indian capitalism, and intensify the exploitation of the working class and rural poor. The farm laws were passed in last September’s session of parliament together with labour “reforms” that illegalize most strikes and promote precarious contract-labour jobs.

Under these conditions, the Modi government fears that the longer the farmers’ protest goes on, the greater becomes the risk it could serve as the catalyst for the eruption of much broader social opposition to the Indian ruling elite’s class war agenda. It is in this context that the right-wing BJP government has vastly expanded its vicious campaign of repression against the protesting farmers and their supporters, following their January 26 tractor rally in Delhi to mark Republic Day.

The Delhi police, which are directly controlled by Modi’s chief henchman and Home Minister Amit Shah, have filed 44 First Information Reports (FIR) against hundreds of farmers and more than 40 farmer leaders, claiming they orchestrated mass “violence” on Republic Day. One hundred twenty-two farmers from Punjab and Haryana have been arrested.

The Modi government is also trying to disperse the tens of thousands of protesters who continue to camp at the protest sites by cutting their access to water, electricity and telecommunications. The police have put up several layers of “war zone-like” barricades to prevent the protesters from entering Delhi and confine them to the protest sites.

The Modi government’s repressive measures have thus far backfired. Tens of thousands of new protesters, including women, youth and students, have begun arriving at the protest sites to show their solidarity with those encamped on the outskirts of India’s capital.

In a meeting held on February 10, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella of farm unions which is leading the agitation, announced an expansion of the nationwide campaign to repeal the farm laws. Future actions to be taken by farmers include a several hours-long nationwide railway blockade on Thursday, February 18.

The Indian Express reported that Punjab’s first Kisan Mahapanchayat, or great local farmer’s gathering, held in Ludhiana’s Jagraon sub-district on February 11 drew a “massive gathering of farmers” intent on showing their support for the ongoing agitation. Similar gatherings have taken place in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan over recent days.

Modi and his BJP government, which have incessantly sought to fan the flames of communalism by labelling the farmers’ agitation as a subversive movement infiltrated, if not controlled, by Sikh separatists, have been shaken by this upsurge of popular support. On January 29, a 100,000-strong Mahapanchayat was held in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest state, which is ruled by BJP Chief Minister Yogi Adiyanath, a notorious Hindu communalist. In 2013, communal riots in Muzaffarnagar district resulted in the deaths of 42 Muslims and 20 Hindus, and left the area deeply divided on communal lines. Yet at the January 29 meeting, Muslims and Hindus jointly expressed their solidarity with the protesting farmers.

Speaking during the debate on the “Motion of Thanks” for President Kovid Nath’s address to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s bicameral parliament, on February 8, Modi slandered the protesting farmers and their supporters, describing them as a new breed of “ andolan-jivi ” (“professional protesters”) promoting a “new FDI or Foreign Destructive Ideology.”

The Modi government has combined these vicious denunciations of the protesters with mounting state repression. Some of the most notable recent examples of this include:

• On February 13, a Delhi Police special cell arrested Disha Ravi, a 22-year-old student, and climate activist who helped found “Fridays For Future,” and charged her with sedition. The basis for this draconian charge was the allegation that she disseminated “a Google toolkit doc” related to the farmer protests in Delhi through social media sites. In a statement tweeted on Sunday, the Delhi Police accused Ravi of being “an editor” of the “toolkit” and a “key conspirator in (the) document’s formulation and dissemination.” The police also claim that Ravi, along with at least two others, “collaborated with pro-Khalistani Poetic Justice Foundation to spread disaffection against the Indian State.”
  
  In a statement, the SKM condemned the arrest of Ravi and demanded her “immediate unconditional release.” The farmer union said this is “part of a wider pattern of intimidation” with the aim of discouraging people who are extending support to the farmers’ agitation. After appearing before a magistrate in Delhi, Ravi was remanded for five days under police custody.

• On February 4, the cyber-crime cell of the Delhi Police registered an FIR against “pro-Khalistan” creators of a “toolkit” on the farmer protests, accusing them of waging a “social, cultural and economic war against the Government of India.” The case against unnamed persons included charges of “sedition,” “criminal conspiracy,” and “promoting hatred.” The toolkit, to the government’s ire, was shared by climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has backed the farmers’ agitation on Twitter.
  
  
• On February 8, Reuters reported that India’s technology minister had asked social media platform Twitter to take down 1,178 Twitter accounts on the grounds they were spreading “misinformation” about the farmers’ protests. According to the news report, which quoted from a Technology Ministry source, New Delhi wrote to Twitter on February 4 demanding it remove the accounts, which it said were “backed by arch-rival Pakistan or operated by sympathizers of Sikhs.” Twitter subsequently responded by declaring that it had blocked access to 97 percent of the accounts the government had said were spreading “provocative content and misinformation.”
  
  
• Beginning on Tuesday February 9 and continuing through Sunday, February 14, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the residences of managers, editors and journalists of NewsClick.in, an independent media portal based in Delhi. As in many such raids targeting journalists and NGOs, the state authorities claimed their actions were linked to “money laundering cases.” But the raids were transparently an attempt to intimidate NewsClick, which has provided extensive, sympathetic coverage of the farmers’ agitation.

Despite the immense courage and personal sacrifices of the farmers in the face of this ruthless campaign of state repression, the politics of the farm unions—which are led by more prosperous, politically-connected farmers—are playing directly into the hands of Modi. Insisting that their movement is “non-political,” the unions have ruled out making any broader appeal to the mass opposition to the Modi government.

On February 14, the SKM held candlelit marches across the country, “remembering the sacrifice of the martyred soldiers” in the Pulwama bomb attack in 2019, with the apparent aim of countering Modi and the BJP’s claims that their protest is “anti-national.” In the suicide bombing in Indian-held Kashmir, about 40 Indian security personnel were killed. Modi seized on the incident to ratchet up tensions with Pakistan, taking the two nuclear-armed powers to the brink of war. Moreover, the BJP exploited the incident to launch a bellicose, nationalist-communalist election campaign that culminated in Modi’s reelection to a second term in office in May 2019. By commemorating this event, the farmers’ unions are directly strengthening the hand of Modi, the BJP, and the Hindu supremacist right.

The Stalinist parties, principally the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and Communist Party of India, and their affiliated trade unions are playing the decisive role in preventing the working class from intervening in the political crisis provoked by the farmers’ agitation and advancing a socialist program to rally the rural masses—above all the agricultural workers and marginal farmers—against the Modi government and Indian capitalism.

Despite swelling social anger among workers against the Modi government’s pro-corporate onslaught, which was underscored by the massive nationwide general strike that occurred the very same day the farmers’ agitation began, the CPM and CPI are doing everything in their power to keep the working class on the sidelines and prevent it from linking its struggles with the rural masses.

Instead, the Stalinists’ principal concern has been to subordinate the farmers’ protest to the opposition Congress Party, with which the CPM and CPI are politically aligned, and other right-wing opposition parties. Till recently the Indian bourgeoisie’s preferred party of government, the Congress long spearheaded the ruling elite’s pro-investor “reform” agenda and its drive to forge a close partnership with US imperialism. When it held power prior to 2014 it sought to impose similar pro-agribusiness reforms. Yet the Stalinists have closely coordinated their response to the farmers’ agitation with the Congress Party leadership, issuing hollow and hypocritical joint statements that denounce Modi and hail the farmers’ protests.

As infections surge, highly contagious strain of COVID-19 confirmed in Sri Lanka

Naveen Dewage

With nearly 1,000 infections reported daily in Sri Lanka, the highly contagious British strain of COVID-19 has been confirmed to be found in several urban areas, including Colombo. This new variant has caused the pandemic to spread at an unprecedented rate throughout the world. According to Sri Lankan researchers, it will increase the rate of spread in the country by 50 percent.

As of Monday, the official figures, undoubtedly highly under-reported, stood at a total of 390 deaths and 75,209 infections. The government and media have seized on the relatively low figures to boast that Sri Lanka has achieved the 10th position in controlling the pandemic, but COVID-19 testing rates in the country are low.

Workers jostle to get seat in bus at Kottawa (Credit: WSWS)

Doctors and medical experts have warned that the country could face a health catastrophe due to inadequate health facilities and an acceleration of the pandemic’s spread.

Institute for Health Policy (IHP) Executive Director Dr Ravindra Rannan-Eliya told EconomyNext: “Sri Lanka will have to step up its pandemic prevention measures without delay.” He added: “There is a significant drop in numbers of PCR tests down to some 12,000 to 14,400 and we need massive increase in testing, up to 60,000 a day or more.” Government has actually given up on any expansion of tests.

Speaking to the media on February 9, Dr. Haritha Aluthge, editor of the pro-government Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA), said that extraordinary numbers of patients were being reported and the risks had gone up in every province.

While the rate of COVID-19 infection was 3 percent before January, Aluthge said that it had reached 6 percent in January and 7 percent in recent days. “Now, there are 7-8 infections reported for every 100 PCR tests” he said. While there were 112 deaths in January, about 50 deaths were reported in the first week of February. One reason for increasing infection rates was the delay in the results of PCR tests, Aluthge said.

On February 10, Ravi Kumudesh, the president of Medical Laboratory Professionals Union, reported that already 6,000 PCR samples were stuck at the Medical Research Institute (MRI) without the release of results. “It seems like they have given up on PCR testing the way they did earlier,” he told EconomyNext. “They are focused on other things. The interest to conduct PCR tests is gone.”

Elaborating, Kumudesh said: “For about two months now, [the] reagents needed for PCR testing have not been supplied to the Mulleriyawa lab. As a result, that lab is no longer operating. An extraction machine at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) is also not being used, which is a big blow to PCR testing there.”

This dangerous situation is a direct result of government’s policies that dictate the masses should live under the “new normal” with the economy being opened despite the spread of the virus. The trade unions have issued statements supporting the government’s policies. Lankadeepa reported on February 9 that there were 800 biosamples piled at the Badulla General Hospital because of the lack of PCR machines to carry out tests. Dr. Shantha Gamagedara, a specialist at that hospital, said that there was a delay of three days to release the PCR test results from the one machine.

Most at risk are workers forced to work under unsafe conditions in the factories and workplaces. Among the samples at the general hospital in Badulla district are those of the workers of a garment factory in Rideemaliyadda, a remote area in the district.

The government opened the schools on November 23 throughout the island’s provinces, except in the Western Province. As the cases are rising throughout the country and the situation in the Western Province is worsening, all the schools should have been closed. However, Education Minister G.L. Peiris announced on February 10 that schools in the Western Province would also be opened on March 15 with a few exceptions.

Students, teachers and parents have expressed concerns about the opening of schools. When the new school term started on January 11, only 55 percent of students attended. The attendance of students and teachers only went up after a barrage of propaganda by authorities and the media. Teachers unions are also tacitly supporting the opening of schools under unsafe conditions.

Garment factories, at which thousands of workers are employed, have become epicentres of the pandemic. Reports are emerging daily of infections in garment factories but it is treated as normal in the media. Workers told the World Socialist Web Site that the pandemic was spreading at the Vanavil MAS garment factory in Killinochchi in the Northern Province but the company was still not prepared to close the factory.

The concern of factory owners is not the health and lives of workers, but export targets and profits.

The chairperson of the Joint Apparel Association Forum Sri Lanka, A. Sukumaran, recently told a panel discussion: “There is a global demand for apparel but Sri Lanka is falling short in meeting deadlines and important clients are moving towards competitors who are supplying without any delay.”

The policies of the government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse are dictated by the demands of big business to maintain production and profits amid a rising toll of infections and deaths.

The working class should fight for the closure of all non-essential services, factories and schools with full compensation for those workers who lose their income. In essential services, including health sector, full protection from the virus must be provided. Billions of rupees must be allocated for social services including health care. The COVID-19 vaccine should be provided to all free of charge.

The year-long experience of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of the capitalist system. Along with creating unnecessary death and disease, the ruling class has exploited the pandemic to impose new burdens on the backs of working people. Even the provision of the vaccine has been subordinated to the profit interests of big companies and the requirements of capitalist regimes.

Severe winter weather leaves millions without electricity during record cold temperatures across the US

Alex Findijs

Severe winter weather across the United States has ground traffic to a halt and cut power to millions of people. Temperatures in areas as far south as New Orleans have fallen below freezing with many parts of the country facing subzero temperatures.

Nearly 800 temperature records have been shattered in the past week under severe polar vortex conditions which have become more frequent in recent years, with human-induced climate change destabilizing the jet stream allowing for Arctic air to descend deep into the southern parts of the country.

A woman walks through falling snow in San Antonio, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas, all states which experience little average snowfall, received several inches of snow with some areas recording up to a foot of snowfall in the past couple of days.

The severe weather has been destructive and deadly. Last week icy conditions resulted in six people dying in a 133-car pileup near Fort Worth, Texas.

Officials from Harris County, Texas believe the death of a homeless man in his van was related to storm conditions on Monday. The homeless, particularly in typically warmer regions of the country, are the most at risk of freezing to death or suffering severe injuries during sudden cold snaps. Those who are able to take shelter in warming centers, which have been opened across northern Texas, confront the additional danger posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Texas in particular has faced some of the most severe fallout from the storm. Governor Greg Abbott called the storm “unprecedented” and remarked that snow and ice would make travel in the coming days “virtually impossible.”

While the snow and ice have been dangerous, the threat posed by the bitter cold is even greater. Predicted low temperatures for today in Little Rock, Arkansas will reach -1 degree Fahrenheit, with Oklahoma City potentially dropping to -9 degrees F. Freezing temperatures are even reaching as far south as the eastern coast of Mexico.

The dangerously low temperatures, the lowest below average anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment, are made even more concerning by the rampant power outages that have affected several states. Four million households and businesses have so far experienced power outages during this winter storm, with 3.5 million left without power in Texas alone. More than 100,000 people lost power in Louisiana, 66,000 lost power in Mississippi and tens of thousands lost power in neighboring states.

The Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which manages the power grids for 14 states in Central and Southern United States, has warned that the drop in temperatures has drastically increased demand for electricity beyond the ability of the power system to provide for everyone.

“After exhausting usage of available reserve energy, SPP has now subsequently directed its member utilities to implement controlled interruptions of service to prevent further, more widespread and uncontrolled outages,” the utility said in a statement.

SPP moved to direct regional and local power systems to conduct controlled outages, called “rolling blackouts,” of up to an hour. These bursts of power outages are intended to relax the pressure on electricity generators with the hope of averting a broader blackout and to ensure that essential facilities, such as hospitals, are able to receive the power they need.

However, several grid systems experienced systemwide failures that resulted in many areas facing full blackouts that lasted hours or are continuing.

Kenny Mercado, executive vice president for CenterPoint Energy, told KPRC that rolling blackouts cannot be conducted in southeastern Texas anymore because there is not enough electricity to move around the system.

Desperate to reduce the consumption of electricity, utility companies and energy agencies are calling on residents to reduce consumption as much as possible. If more power is not provided soon, millions could face dangerously cold temperatures in their own homes under blackout conditions.

The lack of electricity is also impacting other social services. A water treatment plant in Fort Worth, Texas lost power Monday for several hours. The resulting lack of water pressure forced 100,000 people to be put under a “boil water notice” and could be without water through Wednesday.

The problem with Texas’s power supply is not just an issue of demand, though. The storm has had drastic effects on power production infrastructure that has impacted 75 percent of the state’s power generation capacity.

Information released by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) indicates that the cold has limited the supply of natural gas to power plants, and half of the state’s wind turbines have frozen.

Oil and gas production have been halted due to the weather, pipelines are facing issues and gas refineries have suspended operations. Even coal and nuclear power plants have reported issues due to the extreme cold conditions.

The drop in power production and rise in demand have seen electricity prices rise by upwards of 10,000 percent to the point where they may reach the limit of $9,000 per megawatt hour. In Oklahoma, the price of natural gas skyrocketed to $600 per million BTU, or British Thermal Units. (The average cost for natural gas is $3 per million BTU, according to the US Energy Information Administration.)

Temperatures are not expected to reach above freezing until Friday of this week, and further snowstorms are anticipated to move over the central United States, sweeping into the Northeast. If power generation is unable to return to normal levels, then millions of people could continue to see power outages and a lack of heating throughout the rest of the week, leading to injury and death for those stuck without any alternatives.

Behind GM’s shift to all-electric vehicles by 2035 (Part 1)

Marcus Day

At the end of January, General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced that the company aims to transition to selling only zero-emission cars, SUVs and light trucks by 2035, phasing out passenger vehicles with gasoline- and diesel-powered engines. The company also said it had set 2040 as the target when all its US factories and facilities will be carbon neutral.

GM electric cars charging at EVgo stations (GM Media)

GM had previously announced that it is investing $27 billion in electric vehicles (EVs) and self-driving vehicles over the next five years, up from $20 billion before the COVID-19 pandemic began. It is planning to offer 30 different EV models by 2025.

The company is already close to finishing the development of Factory Zero, formerly the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, which is due to come online later this year. Once reopened, it will produce electric versions of the Hummer SUV and eventually the Cruise Origin self-driving vehicle.

While GM left itself ample wiggle room in its timeline to move to all-electric—calling the plan an “aspiration”—the announcement nonetheless reflects tectonic shifts in the global auto industry and world economy.

Throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries, internal combustion engines have been deeply integrated into the vast and increasingly globalized systems of auto production, while also shaping transportation, economic activity and daily life for billions of people.

However, complex objective factors—particularly technological developments, including cheaper lithium-ion battery production methods—are accelerating the shift towards electric vehicles, in turn spurring a bitter struggle among the major automakers to dominate the technologies, supply chains and markets related to them.

Electric vehicles still make up a relatively small share of global sales. Around 3.2 million plug-in vehicles were sold in 2020, according to EV-Volumes, an industry consulting firm based in Sweden. However, that number is expected to grow dramatically, with 70 percent increase projected for 2021 alone. Around 150 new battery electric and plug-in hybrid models are slated to come on the market this year, and total electric and hybrid vehicles worldwide could top 140 million by 2030, the International Energy Agency has stated.

Europe and China both saw substantial growth in EV sales last year, despite overall slumps in their auto markets due to the coronavirus. New plug-in EV sales in Europe grew 137 percent year over year in 2020, EV-Volumes reported, accounting for 10.2 percent of total sales, up from just 3.3 percent in 2019.

In China, sales of New Energy Vehicles (NEVs)—which include hybrid gas-electric, plug-in battery electric, and hydrogen fuel cell, among others—grew at a relatively slower, though still substantial, 12 percent in 2020. Sales of NEVs in January 2021 were up 239 percent from the same time last year.

China now has the largest auto market in the world—bigger than the US and Japan combined—and has aggressively promoted electric vehicles through state subsidies and other measures, in an effort to both position itself as the frontrunner in the sector and, more recently, to offset the negative impact of COVID-19 on its economy.

In the US, new electric vehicle sales grew at an anemic four percent in 2020, according to EV-Volumes, with EV upstart Tesla accounting for nearly 80 percent of the total.

In recent years, established US automakers such as GM and Ford have been increasingly falling behind in the EV race. Investors have exerted mounting pressure on the Detroit Big Three to cut costs and free up capital to make the significant technological, research and development investments required to produce electric vehicles at large scale.

The strategists for US imperialism have also looked with growing alarm at the swift growth of its foreign rivals, particularly China in the EV sector, with calls for a shift in approach away from that of the Trump administration, whose policies favored the prolongation of gas-powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles under the Trump and Biden administrations

Just days before the company’s announcement, President Joe Biden announced plans to have the fleet of federal government vehicles transitioned to electric units built in the US. His announcement was made in the course of signing a “Buy American” executive order, which continues the reactionary economic nationalism and protectionism of the Trump administration, while at the same time seeking to shore up support for the discredited, pro-corporate trade unions.

The White House quickly praised GM’s announced intentions to shift to electric vehicles, with a spokesperson stating, “We applaud efforts by the private sector to further embrace renewable and clean energy technologies. The president and many others have said, efforts like this will help grow our economy and create good-paying union jobs.”

GM’s CEO Barra has been in regular communication with the Biden administration, joining a virtual meeting with the president-elect, corporate and union officials in November shortly after the election. The company is no doubt lobbying behind the scenes for only modest increases to emissions standards and regulations of the industry, following its aggressive rollback under the Trump administration, perhaps in return offering to help burnish the Biden administration’s image of “taking action on climate change” in its early days.

However, successive Democratic and Republican administrations, each beholden to US imperialism and capitalist profit interests, have proven incapable of enacting the scientifically guided and internationally coordinated changes in production and economic activity necessary to prevent a further disastrous warming of the planet.

Under rules enacted by the Obama administration, fuel economy standards were supposed to reach 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, itself an inadequate benchmark to sufficiently rein in greenhouse gas emissions. But with less fuel-efficient vehicles such as SUVs and pick-up trucks constituting a growing share of automakers’ profits in the latter half of the last decade, many of the major auto companies seized upon the opportunity provided by the new Trump administration in 2017 to press for considerably slackened emissions standards.

President Donald Trump gestures towards GM CEO Mary Barra, right, before the start of a meeting with auto executives, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Not long after his 2016 electoral victory, GM CEO Barra met with Trump and agreed to serve on a White House economic policy panel, along with other corporate executives. She personally pushed to have the Obama-era emissions rules diminished, and they subsequently were in 2018, as part of a broad effort by Trump and congressional Republicans to gut environmental and other corporate regulations.

In September 2019, the Trump administration then moved to revoke California’s authority to set stricter emissions standards than those at the federal level, after automakers objected that the lack of uniformity in US regulations would lead to increased production costs. GM, along with then-Fiat Chrysler (now Stellantis), Toyota and others joined a lawsuit supporting the Trump administration in its legal battle against the state.

After the election of Biden last November, however, GM dropped out of the lawsuit, followed by Stellantis and Toyota just this month. Barra stated at the time, “We believe the ambitious electrification goals of the President-elect, California, and General Motors are aligned to address climate change by drastically reducing automobile emissions.”

Despite GM’s apparent about-face, the outcome is that the Biden administration is now floating 2026 emissions standards of about 51 miles per gallon, looser than the rules enacted under the Obama administration.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration, along with Democratic Party-aligned media such as the New York Times, has signaled that it views the development of a domestic supply chain for EVs as a matter of “national security,” i.e., the interests of US imperialism.

The New York Times followed GM’s announcement of its shift to EVs with an article with the worried headline, “G.M.’s Electric Car Push Could Put China in the Driver’s Seat,” expressing concerns over China’s current lead in battery production and the rare earth metals, such as lithium and cobalt, that they require. China currently accounts for roughly 80 percent of US rare earth imports.

In her confirmation hearing last week, Biden’s nominee for Energy Secretary, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, reiterated the administration’s economic nationalist stance, telling Congress, “We can buy electric car batteries from Asia, or we can make them in America.”

The Centers of Global Capitalism Are Migrating Away From the U.S., Europe and Japan

Richard Wolff 

Modern capitalism began in England in the 17th century and spread eventually throughout the world. Its particular evolution produced a global economy organized around centers and a periphery (colonized economically and often politically as well). In those centers—chiefly Western Europe, North America, and Japan—capitalism concentrated its accumulating assets. Factories, offices, stores, distribution centers, and transport networks built fast-growing cities. Supporting institutions of government, schools and universities, and hospitals likewise grew into the centers of urban capitalism especially in the 19th and most of the 20th century.

However, new centers of capitalism have emerged and grown especially quickly over the last half-century. China, India, and Brazil are leading examples where jobs, real wages, consumption, profits, and investments are growing. Their size and global impact not only make them the new centers of capitalism but also require attaching the adjective “old” to capitalism’s earlier set of centers.

The blunt truth of modern economic development is this: capitalism is leaving its old centers and relocating to its new centers. About this leaving we can and should borrow the phrase: this changes everything.

U.S. capitalism achieved global dominance during the 20th century after two world wars plus anti-colonial movements destroyed the European empires that might have contested for such dominance. Impressive as it was, U.S. capitalism’s dominance did not last long. With no little irony, it was the big capitalists of the old centers whose profit motives led them to leave and help create new centers. The latter’s much lower wages and fast-growing mass consumer markets drew them. Many of the biggest capitalist corporations relocated (or expanded) from the old to the new centers. As those corporations that moved early profited mightily, competitive pressures accelerated other corporations’ decisions to follow their example. Capitalism’s relocation of its centers continues.

The U.S.’s economic footprint in world trade and capital flows has been giving way steadily to other countries’ rising footprints. The global dominance of the U.S. dollar confronts increasing transactions using other currencies. Trump’s wholesale attacks on China via trade wars, tariff impositions, and persecutions of individual Chinese corporations and executives did not stop or change China’s economic development. Neither did the hostile denunciations of China’s policies on Hong Kong, its Uighur minority, intellectual property, and so on. Across 2020, China’s economy grew 2.3 percent while that of the United States fell by 3.5 percent. China’s record on containing COVID-19 proved far superior to that of the United States. In short, no end, let alone reversal, of the relative decline of the United States vis-à-vis China occurred.

The aspects and implications of such relocating capitalist centers touch almost every aspect of our lives. The costs and debts plaguing U.S. higher education contrast sharply with the huge expansion of Chinese higher education. Even starker has been the contrast between China’s preparedness and containment of COVID-19 and that of, say, the U.S. and the UK. Of course, in terms of public health, India and Brazil show that even new centers of capitalism can experience severe difficulties when their governments fail to mobilize both private and public resources to achieve prioritized social goals (like defeating a virus or maximizing sustained economic growth).

Old and new centers of capitalism deserve the same key noun—capitalism—because both organize their enterprises/workplaces in the same dichotomous way. A minority are employers while a majority are employees. The minority decide exclusively what the product will be, what technology will be used, where production will occur, and how net revenues will be distributed (to whom and for what). While old and new centers of capitalism usually display different mixtures of private and state enterprises, it is noteworthy that both types of enterprises in both centers are organized in the same employer/employee dichotomy that defines capitalism.

Declining capitalisms’ problems differ from those of rising capitalisms. In the United States, Western Europe, and even Japan, many capitalist corporations pursue defensive strategies (relocating elsewhere, merging, or shrinking). Cost-saving automation is often the more attractive profit-raising strategy than output expansion. Thus, communities agonize over “runaway shops” and joblessness cutting tax revenue: must they reduce public services or impose rising government debt burdens? Real wages stagnate. The jobless move or emigrate looking for work and disrupting their and their families’ lives. Inequality soars as the top 5 percent (major shareholders, top executives) get most of the profits from relocating capitalism to low-wage countries and from automation. The other 95 percent struggle to minimize the costs and burdens on them from capitalism’s relocating centers and other profit-driven strategies.

In contrast, China, India, and Brazil have the problems of fast-growing capitalism, rather like the problems that beset 19th and early 20th-century capitalism in its old centers. Resistance, unions, and socialist movements arise from workers streaming into cities and industrial jobs and adopting correspondingly new ways of thinking and being. Crowding, environmental pollution, and inadequate housing and sanitation trouble the new centers more or less. Ruthless competition produces horrific working conditions as does internationally mobile capital seeking quick profits. Business cycle instability and deeply embedded tendencies to ever-greater income and wealth inequality provoke social criticisms. The latter are often borrowed and adapted from the labor, socialist, and communist movements that grew in capitalism’s old centers.

On the one hand, the movement of capitalism from old to new centers plunges the old into a long-term decline evident in decaying industries and cities. Politics shifts away from prioritizing growth, adjudicating internal conflicts in ways that reproduce growing capitalism, and shaping the world into a distinctive center-periphery pattern. Instead, policies shift toward maintaining the global status quo against the many forces eroding it. For many politicians that shift of focus degenerates into scapegoating amid cascading social divisions and decay.

On the other hand, capitalism finds profitable new territory in its new centers. Growth there offsets a decline in the old centers. The global 1 percent get richer because they draw increased wealth from both the old and new centers. What happened inside capitalist countries—movements, say, from old Rust Belt centers to new high-tech centers—has been transposed onto the world as a whole.

The great social question is whether the different problems of capitalism in both its old and new centers will cumulatively undermine the system or provide it with a further lease on life. Perhaps growing conflict between old and new centers—expressed, for example, in the struggle between the United States and China—will follow the ancient path from economic to military conflict. Then the great social question will go unanswered and global capitalism would have fulfilled one prophecy of its critics: that its internal contradictions will prove self-destructive.

Military Coup: The Myanmar – China Nexus

Askiah Adam

Myanmar has reverted to military rule. Claiming allegations of election fraud as basis for a coup the military has detained top civilian leaders of the former government, including the State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi who was head of government and the President, Win Myint. And many others including the student protesters that had brought Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy (NLD) to share power with the military in a transition to democracy. On 1st February 2021 this ended and the military regime has announced a one year long national emergency before holding another election.

Meanwhile, while in power, the Nobel Peace Laureate, Suu Kyi, walked a tightrope of appeasement. She appeared in defence of her government before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against charges of genocide of the Rohingyas, an ethnic group robbed of its citizenship, denied its human rights and subject to ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar military. While some accuse her of racist prejudices towards the Rohingyas for her inactions, as head of government she was in no position to admit to the world that she had little control of the army, very much a part of her government.

Today that is a proven fact despite her best efforts. And to make matters worse the military government has charged her with crimes to legally silence her. The November elections demonstrated her continued popularity among the people, her waning international support notwithstanding. Suu Kyi held fast to her struggle for democracy in Myanmar but the compromises forced on her did much to damage her reputation but helped little in democratising the military.

There is an outcry against the coup in Myanmar, which some of them prefer to call Burma despite the now widely received name encompassing the country’s sovereignty. It is this hegemonic tendency by certain western nations that many find offensive.

In this regard, therefore, the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs of sovereign nations by Beijing is much appreciated, while yet bringing shared prosperity.  Myanmar especially has had relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for 70 years, most of it years of military rule in Myanmar. China’s support had kept successive military regimes in power. Only very recently have there been any problems between Myanmar and China when the civil war in Myanmar spilled over into the Chinese province of Yunan, which shares a border with Myanmar.  But even this is under control.

So when China refused to interfere with the recent Myanmarese reversion to military rule in the UN Security Council, it was no surprise. Inasmuch as relations were good with the NLD government the indications are that nothing will change. China is heavily invested in Myanmar as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Myanmar will provide it with a port that can overcome the risks of Strait of Melaka congestions, imposed and otherwise.

As such, Myanmar has strategic value to China. Supporting Myanmarese sovereignty is also important to its security. The shared border is of immeasurable importance to China given the presence of the surrounding US bases intended to encircle her as part of the US’s Asian pivot policy. Maybe its plausible to believe that an army on standby is more attractive to Beijing than a civilian government propped up by the West on its borders.

Losing Myanmar as part of the Indo-Chinese buffer zone, too, is surely not a palatable option. Vietnam is already an illogical development for China where the US is being welcomed back even before the pervasive damage of the Vietnam War has yet to be fully repaired. Granted a thousand years of Chinese colonialism is not easily forgiven by the Vietnamese but the US damage caused by intensive bombing and harrowing Agent Orange deformities still persisting many decades after the war is even more horrifying. Hence China’s wariness of its borders.

Myanmar is showing risks of prolonged instability. Just over a week since the military coup the protests are escalating in the country’s two main cities Yangon and Mandalay. The police are using water cannons and protesters are being detained. It is claimed by the international media there is more demonstration of concern about the loss of democracy in Myanmar worldwide. But one wonders why a general can rule in Egypt and not in Myanmar?

Meanwhile, reports from Bangladesh suggests that the Rohingya refugees are happy to see the end of Aung San Suu Kyi’s rule. While the Dhaka Tribune piece cautions the Rohingyas, thus far, however, history has shown that repatriation in the past happened during military rule. The military has, in fact, immediately after the coup, reached out to the Rohingyas in Rakhine state. China is the only power to have offered a substantive contribution to the resolution of the Rohingya problem. It has offered to play an overseeing role in a tripartite arrangement to repatriate the Rohingyas where China can hold to account both sides. Such a move indicates the special relationship between China and Myanmar irrespective of who governs.

Of course, now that China is heavily invested in Myanmar vis-a-vis its BRI policy, debilitating political instability in its neighbour is something China will give its all to prevent. Its refusal to act against Myanmar in the UN Security Council is a strong signal that China still has Myanmar’s back. That Russia has stood by China in this respect suggests an unwavering strategic alliance between these two super powers.

Myanmar as a member nation of ASEAN is unlikely to be under pressure from the other members. Like China the organisation holds dear the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of its members. Rather, this regional organisation exercises constructive engagement as the means to resolve any and all contradictions. This has been the position it has always held regarding Myanmar. There was no aversion to the military junta of old and, in all likelihood, the stance will remain unchanged.

Which time has shown that China is comfortable with.  While there maybe protests that are escalating at the moment its further escalation will most likely be too reminiscent of Hong Kong and Thailand.

British government jails migrants as “people smugglers,” excludes and mistreats child migrants

Simon Whelan

Two more migrants have been jailed by British courts for the “crime” of steering small dinghies across the English Channel. Fouad Kakaei, 30, and Sadrallah Bahador, 35, both Iranian nationals, were vilified and jailed for two years. When their sentences have been served, they will be deported under draconian laws. Kakaei attempted to claim asylum but was instead arrested and held on remand until his trial.

These and other migrants are being jailed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government for taking the tiller of their flimsy vessels while crossing the Channel. Those filmed steering the craft are being charged with “facilitation”. Desperate people seeking shelter are being sent to prison for preventing their seaborne craft from drifting aimlessly in the dangerous conditions of a busy shipping lane.

Only the BBC, the British state broadcaster, even bothered to report on the sentencing of these two men. This virtual news blackout keeps from the British population the crimes carried out by the Johnson government.

A Border Force vessel brings a group of people thought to be migrants into the port city of Dover, England, from small boats, Saturday Aug. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Aneurin Brewer, defending Kakaei, said, "Many of the other migrants on board agreed to assist with piloting the boat" and his client was "merely unfortunate enough to be the one left holding the tiller when the boat was interdicted". Kakaei agreed to pilot the boat because he feared the occupants of the vessel would not safely make the crossing otherwise and "nobody else could do it".

The judge who presided over Kakaei’s case, Mark Weekes, accepted that the Iranian national had a "well-founded fear of persecution" in the religious theocracy, but in a truly facile and contradictory response stressed, "I do not accept that ultimately you didn't want to get into the boat or that any form of duress applies in your situation” [emphasis added].

Dan O'Mahoney is the Home Office's Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, a position created by Home Secretary Priti Patel for the purpose of presiding over the relentless hunting down of immigrants and asylum seekers attempting to make the perilous journey from mainland Europe to the UK. O’Mahoney absurdly spoke about how Kakaei's actions "risked lives" and that this prosecution "put a stop to that cycle of criminality".

Concerning Bahador’s sentencing, O'Mahoney again sought to paint a desperate migrant as a potential mass murderer: "The vessel Bahador was steering was designed to hold just eight people, but it was carrying nearly twice that number. The lives of everyone on board this dangerously overcrowded boat were at risk."

O'Mahoney turned reality on its head, claiming the crossings were only made possible by pilots who were willing to take control of vessels rather than the conditions created by the wars waged over the last three decades by British and American imperialism in the Persian Gulf, Middle East and North Africa and the grinding poverty and oppression suffered by masses of the world’s population.

He insisted, "That is why it is so important that we continue to prosecute those who have taken the helm and demonstrate that there are serious consequences to their reckless actions”.

The continued pursuit by the Conservative government of a “hostile environment” for those seeking shelter in the UK is devoid of any decency and boundaries. On January 26, the government announced that unaccompanied child refugees will no longer be granted sanctuary in the UK. Immigration Minister Chris Philp said that regardless of the previous commitments made in the Dubs Amendment of 2016, which required the government to support asylum seeking children, the British government will no longer offer a legal route to the UK for these children.

The Dubs scheme was initially meant to offer settlement to 3,000 child refugees, but was eventually capped at just 480 places. This figure was reached by May 2020.

The only children able to seek the assistance of the UK will be those with relatives already residing in the country. In northern France there are currently almost 288 lone minors who are hoping to reach Britain but do not have relatives in the country. Vulnerable children will have no legal alternative to placing their lives in the hands of smuggling gangs in an attempt to reach the UK.

On February 6, the Independent reported that “scores of child refugees” were illegally detained by the UK authorities after making it across the Channel in small boats last summer. The detention of minors for more than 24 hours is banned under the Immigration Act of 2014, and detention for a longer period is only permitted in “exceptional circumstances” and requires the home secretary’s permission. Nevertheless, 80 unaccompanied minors, one fifth of those who attempted the journey, were jailed for periods of time exceeding 24 hours in a processing centre between April and September 2020. One child was held for almost three days, 65 hours, and denied proper sleeping facilities and access to fresh air. This constitutes both child abuse and torture.

Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield said the government was “willfully ignoring the plight of vulnerable children.” There was a “pressing need” to improve processes for minors arriving in Kent, as well as safer, legal routes of entry. “These are vulnerable children who have often lived through unimaginable horrors, and they should be treated as such rather than being stuck in waiting rooms for days on end.”

Last October, a Prison Inspectorate report detailed how unaccompanied minors were often held overnight at an intake unit in Kent, without access to the open air and with next to no natural light. The figures revealed by the children’s commissioner do not include time that the minors spent in the “non-detained” part of the Kent intake unit once their initial claims were processed. Their movements are still limited during this period of time, which exceeded 95 hours on several occasions.

The director at Detention Action, Bella Sankey, laid the blame for this disgraceful situation firmly at the door of Patel. Her “refusal” to properly resource local councils to accept child refugees, explained Sankey, placed child welfare “gravely at risk” and potentially meant “hundreds more children are detained as Channel crossings increase again this year”.

In January, the government confirmed they would no longer provide a safe and legal route to the UK for lone child refugees and thereby create the conditions for minors to turn to even more dangerous and fraught routes.

Enver Solomon, chief executive at the Refugee Council, said the charity was “deeply alarmed” and that “Children who travel to the UK seeking safety have endured horrific experiences both in their home country and during perilous journeys to the UK. On arrival, it is not unusual for these children to present with physical injuries, hypothermia, dehydration and serious mental health needs. They should be treated with compassion, not subjected to prolonged detention while waiting to be taken into care. The welfare of the child must come first in every single case.”

Brazilian unions suppress workers’ opposition to mass layoffs following Ford shutdowns

Brunna Machado

One month after Ford announced the closure of all three of its remaining plants in Brazil, other companies linked to its production chain are dismissing their workers, unleashing a wave of layoffs affecting the most diverse sectors of the auto industry. According to research by the Interunion Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE), the 5,000 layoffs announced by Ford spell the potential destruction of another 118,864 jobs, resulting in a loss of 2.5 billion reais (US$465 million) in annual wages.

Based on this perspective, one can predict a wave of opposition among Brazilian workers. On January 26, about 800 workers at the auto parts manufacturer Arteb, located in the ABC industrial complex in São Paulo, went on strike to protest against 200 layoffs. Founded in 1934, Arteb produces headlights and headlamps for major automakers, and blamed the layoffs on the Ford’s closures in Brazil. Workers were fired by mail.

The strike was led by the ABC Metalworkers Union (SMABC), affiliated to the Workers Party (PT)-controlled CUT federation, and was ended within just two days. The union acted quickly to keep the strike isolated, without making any call to other workers in the region who will soon face the same situation. Attributing the layoffs to the company’s previous financial problems and the already “normalized” high unemployment rate in the industry, SMABC’s general secretary, Moisés Selerges, proposed ending the strike.

Ford assembly. Photo by: Sam VarnHagen/Ford Media

“The situation was complicated. It’s not only the issue of Arteb, but the industry as a whole. Industry is under water because this government has no industrial policy,” said Selerges during a meeting with the workers. “As I told you in the beginning, the union was heading to a possible agreement. So this was the possible agreement that we reached.”

The “possible” agreement reached by the union accepted the 200 layoffs. Even in the face of this clear defeat for the workers, the union still tried to boast that the negotiation had “guaranteed” severance pay, the extension of medical benefits until September and payment for the days on strike.

An announcement on the SMABC website on January 21 had already warned about the generalized nature of the “Ford effect,” which is evident from the recent reduction of working hours in the factories in the ABC region that used to serve the automaker.

“With the announcement of Ford’s closure, we are concerned about a domino effect on auto parts in our region, since several companies supply products to the automaker, including the auto parts plants,” said another union official, Genildo Dias Pereira. “In São Bernardo, just as an example, we have Samot, Fiamm, Rassini, ZHS, Mahle, Selco, among many others. Not to mention Arteb, which is already closing its Camaçari plant [in the state of Bahia, where Ford had one of its factories] after the decision.”

This statement reveals that the SMABC already foresaw the layoffs at Arteb and other plants. Their action during the strike exposes the decisive role of the unions in this process: any spark of resistance must be rapidly extinguished so that it doesn’t spread into a generalized movement of the working class.

While the CUT fulfills its role in the ABC region, its branch in the city of Taubaté, in the countryside of São Paulo, is working to control the anger of 830 workers fired from one of Ford’s plants. Since the closure was announced, a group of employees has taken turns to maintain a permanent vigil in front of the plant, preventing its machinery from being removed. The Taubaté Metalworkers Union (Sindimetau), however, is working to divert the workers away from any concrete struggle against capitalism, and in fact pushing all “earthly issues” aside.

In a motorcade held on January 29, the Sindimetau union officials led the workers in a religious ritual, taking about 300 cars to Brazil’s largest cathedral in Aparecida. Reporting on the motorcade, the union declared: “Messages from the ‘Worker of Nazareth’ in the fight against the scourge of unemployment strengthened workers at the mass this Friday at the National Shrine of Aparecida.”

As it tries to calm workers’ anger with religious sermons and hopes for a miracle falling from the sky, the union is increasingly disarming their struggle, trying to divert it into purely legal and parliamentary channels.

Three civil inquiries were opened by the Public Ministry of Labour in the regions where Ford is shutting down production. On February 5, decisions by two labor judges suspended the possibility of collective dismissal of Ford employees working in the Taubaté and Camaçari plants.

According to Judge Andréia de Oliveira, head of the Second Labor Court of Taubaté, “The size of the company, the number of direct and indirect jobs affected and the social impact to the country do not allow for a simplistic solution to the case.” The judge responsible for analyzing the Camaçari case, on the other hand, stated that any mass layoffs without communication and negotiation with the union “will be full of insurmountable vices, violating the constitutional rights of the workers.”

The court decisions, however, are temporary, conditioning the suspension of the layoffs on the negotiation of severance pay with the respective unions.

According to a report on the UOL Cars website, Ford has already allocated US$ 4.2 billion for the shutdown of its operations in Brazil. Most of this amount will go to compensation for dealerships, factory workers, suppliers and companies providing services at the plants, as well as paying off outstanding loans from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).

Everything indicates that the workers will confront a tentative agreement negotiated between the unions and Ford, similar to the one reached at the São Bernardo do Campo plant, which was closed in 2019. The unions are following the same political roadmap used by the SMABC then. On that occasion, the World Socialist Web Site analyzed:

“When the news of the Ford closure broke, the SMABC did everything in its power to wear down the workers, who went on a 42-day strike. The union discouraged any move to occupy the plant or actions to widen the struggle. The union instead told striking workers to go home and wait for negotiations. It refused to call for any unified action with contract workers or the 20,000 affected in the auto parts industry. It finally shut down the strike on management’s terms, acting in collaboration with the São Paulo government, which announced it would serve as an intermediary in Ford’s negotiations with Caoa [the company that first signaled interest in buying the plant].”

As is now known, no other car manufacturer took over the plant, and the area was bought to be possibly transformed into a logistics center or a shopping mall. However, Julio Bonfim, president of the Camaçari Metalworkers Union and Maoist Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) official, is now using this very promise—that another carmaker will take over production at the plant—to deceive the workers.

While working with the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa of the PT, on a committee searching for companies interested in operating the automotive park, Bonfim is already taking the layoffs for granted, calling only for severance pay. “If Ford has closed its activities and there is no chance of remaining in Camaçari, then let them negotiate severance pay in a fair way,” he said.

No severance pay can compensate for the overwhelming consequences of the massive unemployment to come. Of the nearly 6,000 workers employed by Ford in Brazil today, 4,600 (75 percent) of them work at the Ford Complex in Camaçari. Much of the city’s economy is dependent upon the industrial complex. The city’s mayor has already announced cuts in public education and health care in response to the loss of 10 percent of tax revenue, while demand for these services will only increase as thousands of workers lose their medical care after being thrown out of work.